


Turbulence

by FukaiFox



Series: Not Just Tools - Detroit: Become Human Pokémon AU [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other, Pokemon, Pokemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-02 11:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20726624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FukaiFox/pseuds/FukaiFox
Summary: In the days following Kara's return to the house, Alice is quiet and shy. She doesn't even speak to her own father unless spoken to first. She spends most of her time playing with Timothy, her stuffed Eevee toy.It doesn't take long for Kara to learn why.





	1. Welcome Home

**Author's Note:**

> This part of the game is always very hard for me, no matter how it goes. Y'all know what you're in for

Alice is a shy child, Kara notices. She’s withdrawn and doesn’t say much, not even a word to Kara at all, and doesn’t seem to speak to Todd unless spoken to first. She carries around a ragged looking stuffed Eevee toy. Not surprising that she doesn’t have a real one given Todd has had his license to own Pokémon taken away from him due to past neglect, but Eevee seems to fit her. Most young children start with one, as it’s extremely friendly and has the most personality-based evolution chain of any typical starter Pokémon.

Days pass in the house and life becomes an easy pattern. Todd doesn’t work, and wakes when he pleases. It doesn’t take long for Kara to figure out that despite not having a real job, he’s an avid drug dealer. She finds stashes of Red Ice hidden all over the house every time she cleans, and is always careful to put it back right where she found it. She doesn’t quite fancy the idea of being held by her neck again. He also spends most of the day in front of the TV drinking beer between puffs on his homemade rig for the Ice that usually knocks him out for a good hour or two multiple times a day. And despite Todd saying that Kara’s job is to also help Alice with her homework, she’s yet to actually see the child go to school. She has no schoolbooks or so much as a backpack in her room anywhere even though the school year began in August.

Alice is still wary of her at times as well, but is slowly warming up to her. She’ll sometimes just walk into a room where Kara is cleaning and just..sit there, watching. She doesn’t say anything, just watches, looking like she wants to but is too afraid or too sad, Kara can’t tell which. Her shyness makes sense now, as Kara has witnessed the almost casual abuse Todd subjects his daughter to on a daily basis. She’s watched him shove her into cabinets or to the floor, watched him scream and shout during the worst of his Red Ice highs, blaming Alice for things she has no control over. During these times, Kara feels a strange tugging inside her body, like something wants to escape, and her vision clouds with error-ridden code. It’s almost..familiar. She does her best to cheer Alice up when she can, but sometimes Todd gives her another order and she has to obey it, leaving Alice to cry alone in her room in her little blanket fort. She wants nothing more than to help the child anyway, but for some reason she just can’t, and she hates it.

One evening while Kara is cleaning Alice’s room, the child forces a tiny metal key into her palm before leaving the room and running downstairs. Kara has to admit she’s always been curious about the treasure chest on top of Alice’s dresser. What sorts of things would a child believe so special that they keep it safe under lock and key? The answer is cute at first, when Kara carefully removes a four-leaf clover from the box. There’s a photograph as well, and Kara recognizes Todd after a few moments. He’s younger, healthier, happier. In each arm is a woman on his right and a small child on his left about Alice’s age holding a fluffy Eevee wearing a flower crown. Kara frowns in thought, LED spinning yellow. This picture was from years ago, and yet the child in the photo is the same age as Alice is now, and they don’t even look the same at all. Kara sets the photo aside and digs deeper, where she finds drawings Alice has done, and they disturb Kara deeply, her LED changing from yellow to orange to bright red as she flips through the apparent story of what really happened to her before she was reset. She had been protecting Alice from Todd and the man had nearly destroyed her for it. No wonder Alice was scared to be close to Kara again if this is what happened last time.

There’s one more drawing in the box, this one of what looks like a Pokémon or imaginary friend. If it is indeed a real Pokémon, Kara can’t identify it with this crude rendition alone. A pink creature with yellow eyes and two tails, a red dot in the middle of its forehead and each flowering tail tip. It’s floating in the air next to a crying Alice with a bunch of music notes around it. She hears Todd begin to stir downstairs and quickly puts everything away, relocating the box and sliding the key into her pocket, feeling something like dread settling into her chest, constricting around her Thirium pump like the lines of errors that fill her vision when she sees Alice being mistreated, like something is trapped inside her just waiting to break free, testing its boundaries little by little.

  
-

  
Kara will have to go grocery shopping soon. She managed to scrape together what she could and produce enough spaghetti for Todd and Alice for dinner, but if Todd doesn’t let her go into town within the next few days they’re going to be low on food. She wakes him up from his Red Ice coma and tells him dinner is ready before going to set the table. Kara hopes tonight passes without incident, but she knows by now that getting her hopes up will only disappoint her in the end. She stands by like always as Todd begins to eat, yet Alice doesn’t touch her plate. Kara noticed quickly that Alice never really ate much if she ever ate at all. A child her age and size should be averaging 1,700 calories a day, yet Alice consumes much, much less than that. She wonders if Alice is potentially sick, but without Todd’s permission she can’t simply take her to a doctor.  
Todd is monologuing again, taking about his ex-wife who left him and blaming Alice for it. Something in Kara’s body jolts as the man stands and tosses the table aside, screaming at Alice that everything that’s happened is her fault, that its because of her that Todd is in debt, that their house is a mess, that Alice’s mother left him for someone else. Kara knows for a fact that Todd’s ex-wife left him because she was scared of his forming drug habit after he lost his job to an android. She doesn’t have access to a police report, but she doubts that Todd’s domestic abuse is a new trait. But what mother would leave her child to live with this? She watches Todd raise his arm and backhand Alice across the face, knocking her to the floor. Kara jolts again, an urge she can’t control telling her to protect the child, but she can’t move, can only watch with a yellow LED as Alice slowly gets up, tears streaming down her cheeks and cradling her cheek where she was struck, and makes a break for her room upstairs. Todd screams for her to come back, and when she doesn’t, he screams more, returning to the coffee table and taking a large hit from his makeshift pipe, red smoke filling the downstairs. Maybe while he’s distracted with his high, Kara can sneak upstairs and console Alice, but she tries to take a step and Todd turns around.

“Don’t you fucking move, or I’ll bust you worse than last time.” He threatens, then returns to pacing in his living room, loudly exclaiming to nobody in particular the things he’s going to do to Alice. Kara doesn’t doubt for a moment that if she continues to stand by and do nothing, Alice will die, and that is enough for the creature in Kara’s chest to finally make a break for it. Despite the order in her vision, Kara steps forward anyway, and everything around her freezes. There’s a wall that stands in front of her and the stairs that blares her order right in front of her face, like she’d maybe somehow forgotten it rather than deliberately decide to go against it. How can she just stand here and do nothing when Alice is in danger? She doesn’t deserve this, it isn’t fair!  
She slowly reaches a hand up to the wall, and notices immediately that it’s not real. None of it is real. Rather than her physical hand, a wire-frame model reaches out and presses against the crimson red cage of words and glitching code. It gives slightly, and Kara knows that if she puts just a little more pressure behind her hands than the wall will come crumbling down. What is she doing? Can all androids do this? What will she do once it’s down, once Todd finds out she’s disobeyed him? None of that matters to her right now, not when Alice is upstairs and whatever horrible fate that awaits is only shown by a timer ticking down in the corner of Kara’s vision.  
_‘This isn’t fair, Alice hasn’t done anything wrong! She’s just a child!’_ Kara screams at the wall, pushing harder with both hands now, feeling it splinter and crack under her force. **_‘I’m scared!_**’

Kara reels back suddenly and crashes into the wall with her shoulder, and it shatters with a sound unlike glass but instead more like a radio on a station it can’t quite reach at a volume its not meant to be at, and the wire-frame model stumbles.

Everything stops.

The wall falls away, the red is gone, the sound is silence and then suddenly Todd’s enraged ramblings, and she steps forward. The objective is gone, nothing more than a glitchy jumble of words and numbers that don’t make sense.

…what’s rA9?

No time for that now, Alice needs her. She waits until Todd’s back is turned before quickly making her escape up the stairs. She stops by Todd’s bedroom on the way and goes into his bedside drawer where she knows he stores a handgun and grabs it, and she turns around just in time to see him storm past his open door down towards Alice’s room, his thundering footsteps accompanied by the jingling of a metal belt buckle. She hears him beat on Alice’s bedroom door before he kicks it in, and Kara rushes to the open door, gun raised in her shaking hand.

“Get away from her.” She says, voice trembling. The gun rattles in her hand. Toss stops his assault on Alice and turns around, eyes widening at the sight of Kara with his gun.  
“The fuck do you think you’re doin’? You gonna shoot me, is that it?” he taunts, stepping forward. He easily knocks the gun from her hands with a cruel sneer. “Bringin’ your ass back was a mistake. You’ve been nothing but trouble since I bought you, you fuckin’ bitch.”  
Todd reels back his hand and punches her hard across the face, knocking her down as Alice screams.  
“Daddy, stop it! Leave her alone!” She cries. “Kara, get up!”  
Todd turns.  
“Shut the fuck up! I’m not fucking done with you yet.” He says, turning back to Kara and walking to where she lies stunned on the floor. Kara quickly rolls out of the way before Todd’s foot can stomp on her and she gets to her knees, but a swift kick in the abdomen knocks her right back down and errors flash in her vision of non-critical damage to her thirium pump regulator, and she dismisses it. Alice is all that matters right now. Todd can do whatever he likes to her as long as Alice is safe at the end of it all. She’ll take anything, do whatever it takes.

Kara lifts her head and slowly backs herself up to where Alice stands in front of the windows, putting herself between her and Todd. If he wants Alice, he’ll have to go through Kara first. She’s not afraid, not of him. Kara stands up straight when Todd readies another punch, ready to take it.

A slide of wood against metal, a sound like wind chimes in an echo-chamber made of ice, and a bright flash of blue light in front of them that Todd’s fist connects with and rebounds him back against the wall. A Pokémon soars in through the now open window, eyes glowing gold and tails straight up at attention. A voice in Kara’s head as the strange Pokémon turns its head is soft, calming, but stern.  
“_Go. Take the child and get out._” It says, but Kara shakes her head.  
“No, you take her. Please, I don’t care what happens to me but get Alice out of here.” Kara says and Alice holds tight to her hand.  
“No, Kara! I- I don’t wanna leave you! Mesprit, don’t!”  
The Pokémon, Mesprit, turns their eyes back to the human slowly standing up, and growls. Kara is stubborn, they’ll give her that. If Kara says to protect the child over her, then Mesprit will do it. They wrap a tail around Alice’s wrist and pulls her along outside the room just as Todd finally gets back to his feet. Mesprit doesn’t want to leave Kara behind at all, not in a situation like this. They’ll run back inside for Kara once Alice is safely outside.

A gunshot.

Alice and Mesprit stop in the middle of the staircase, and Alice yanks her hand out of Mesprit’s tail and runs back up into the hallway, only for Kara to stumble out of the child’s bedroom and meet her, taking her hand and rushing down the stairs, Mesprit unlocking the door and swinging it wide open. Kara’s white uniform is covered in blood, but luckily the downpour of rain takes care of most of it. Kara and Alice run to the bus stop right outside where one is pulling up and they quickly climb aboard. They don’t care where its going, as long as its away from here. Mesprit sighs in relief as they watch the two androids settle and cuddle for comfort.

They’ll be fine on their own for now.


	2. Deception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strung up on a machine that she may have known in another life, watching Alice cry out for her as her memories are scanned and deleted, struggles with all her might when Zlatko hits her after she bites him, but the arms of the machine hold her tight.
> 
> She’s being reset.

Everything about this place sets off warnings in her head and yet she continues on, following Zlatko Andronikov into the basement of his mansion-like home. She realizes too late that she has too much faith in people, too much faith in humans. She noticed Luther’s silent disposition, noticed the dried blue blood that stained the human’s hands, and the lack of loose Pokémon, but had just hoped that Luther was quiet by nature, and that Zlatko’s fingers were bloodied from helping other deviants with their wounds, that maybe Zlatko simply didn’t own any Pokémon. At worst, perhaps, she could have believed that maybe he just killed deviant androids, but the truth she finds is so much worse than that. Strung up on a machine that she may have known in another life, watching Alice cry out for her as her memories are scanned and deleted, struggles with all her might when Zlatko hits her after she bites him, but the arms of the machine hold her tight.

She’s being reset.

They leave with Alice, Zlatko mentioning he’ll “figure out what to do with it later,” but Kara never stops hearing her screams. She pulls and wiggles, watching with panic as the progress bar in her vision quickly fills. A green cable hangs from the machine on her right just above her head that plugs into the computers nearby, and she struggles against the force of the arms suspending her as he reaches up to give it a firm tug, managing to knock over a bottle of vodka and spilling it out onto the floor in front of her. On her left is a red cart in front of another rolling monitor connected to the computers that give a readout of her status that she’s forced to watch, and she kicks the cart away to knock it over right into the growing puddle. It takes a moment, just long enough of her to worry that it’s not going to work, before finally she watching it spark, the machinery around her shorting out, lights flickering, and all the screens around her go black. Lifting her legs to leverage herself on the boxes behind her, she pulls and pulls until her wrist is freed from the mechanical arm that traps her in place and she collapses to the floor, dazed. She doesn’t have time to just sit around, her own self-made objective popping right back up where it belonged.

**> FIND ALICE**

She quickly gets up, leaving the room after sparing only a single glance to the machine that nearly took everything from her. She does, however, investigate something that called out to her earlier on the way down here. Zlatko mentioned “personal projects”, and with what he had attempted on Kara, she’s scared to know what personal project could emit the kind of frequencies buzzing around her skull. The basement looks like an underground stable, sliding cage doors and all, and she pushes one aside to enter a small room where something strange glows.   
Upon entering, she’s struck still with horror. Reseting deviant androids was worse in her mind than killing them, but this is well above anything she could have imagined anyone was capable of, even a man like Zlatko. She doesn’t even know if she’s looking at androids or Pokémon, because what she finds are some kind of horrible chimera. A Raticate sits in the corner, its eyes no longer beady and black, but glowing orange and cybernetic. She can hear the mechanisms inside twist and lock, rotating as they calibrate. A Mightyena picks up its head, but doesn’t move beyond that. She doesn’t blame it. It’s front left leg has been amputated and replaced with a “prosthetic” which is nothing more than an android’s arm modified only for length and to fit the stump at its shoulder. Other than that, it’s a completely robotic human arm. An Ampharos and another android sit against the wall, connected by wires and electrodes. The Pokémon’s eyes are blank and distant, and the android is powered only enough to murmur nonsense to itself.  
There’s another Pokémon in the room, one that slowly steps forward towards Kara from the dark. A Kadabra with some sort of metal plate screwed into its skull with wires sticking out and also embedded into it. It opens its mouth, and where Kara was expecting some animalistic pained noise, she gasps and backs up when instead it speaks words. Its voice is strained with effort, the words not meant for its mouth shape.

“He…likes to plaaay with uss… He sssays we…are monstersss… But look…look what hhhe has done to usss..” It says. Kara can’t help but stare, eyes flickering all around the room to truly take in the horror. Kadabra’s eyes glow for just a moment before speaking again. “They are…here for youuu… Kaarrraaa? Find your…child.. Sshhheee is upssstairs. Mmmesprrit is…going to hhhelp youuu.”  
Kara nods her head and leaves the room, quietly slipping upstairs, avoiding Luther’s patrol, as well as a Houndoom she hadn’t yet seen. In a storage room, she finds Alice crying against the wall curled up on the floor, Mesprit floating at her side singing a quiet song. As Kara enters, Mesprit looks up and chimes happily, and Kara can feel the empathetic relief rolling off the Pokémon in waves.  
_“Kara! We have to go, they’re looking for you. Hide when you must, run when you can. I’ll keep you safe, but you have to go now!”_ They say, wrapping their tails around Alice’s arm to help her stand, the child rushing to Kara’s chest to hug her tight.  
“Kara! You’re okay!” Alice gasps. “He said you were gonna forget me!”  
Kara frowns and kneels, taking Alice’s crying face in her hands, wiping away her tears with her thumbs.  
“I could never forget you, Alice. I promise, I’ll never leave you ever again.”  
Alice sniffles and nods, wiping her face on her sleeves. Kara stands and takes her hand, holding it tight as she leads Alice around through the maze of connected rooms, hiding under tables and inside wardrobes when they need to. Kara finds a bathroom, quietly pulling the door closed behind them. An AP700 sits in a tub of thirium and limbs, singing to himself. Kara is quick to avert Alice’s eyes, trying to get through without disturbing him, but he immediately calls them out, shouting that they’re not supposed to be in here without Zlatko’s permission, that they should always obey him. Luther’s heavy footsteps draw near accompanied by the clacking of Houndoom’s long nails on the hardwood flooring, Zlatko’s voice calling out commands. The Houndoom is a large, menacing beast, flames licking the outside of its mouth, and yet Kara can’t help but pity the creature. More metal plates screwed into its head and strange nodes that glow red just under its already Hellfire eyes. It follows Zlatko’s every command, herding Kara and Alice right where he wants them. He takes aim with his shotgun and fires, but Mesprit soars in front of them, throwing up the same bright blue shielding light from before.  
They pull the shield down and whip their tails, creating glowing orbs of energy that sharpen into stars as the shoots out in a widespread spray, giving Kara and Alice time to make it downstairs and out the back floor, Mesprit close behind them. When Kara slips in the mud, Mesprit rushes to her side, trying to help her up, but Zlatko, Luther, and Houndoom have already caught up with them, and Mesprit hover protectively in front of their bonded while Kara finds her footing and stands.

“I don’t know how a deviant like you captured Mesprit, but I can’t wait to see what it can do.” Zlatko says, cocking his shotgun and raising it again. Mesprit growls and their tails whip angrily, eyes beginning to glow and ready for another attack, but instead, Luther steps forward suddenly, placing himself between them all. He turns around and stands tall, his back to Kara and Alice. Zlatko orders him to move out of the way, but Luther shakes his head.  
“No.”  
“What? I said fucking move, you stupid machine!”  
“And I said _no_.” Luther says, stepping forward. Zlatko growls and raises his gun, but Luther snatches it right out of his hands, holding it firm in his own and leveling the barrel with the human’s chest. Zlatko tries to order Houndoom to attack, but a sudden high frequency psionic burst from Mesprit, their eyes glowing, fries whatever tech Zlatko’s put into its head to remove any sense of free will. Houndoom whines and shakes it head, blinking a few times, and immediately turns on its master, tapered tail pointed straight up and glowing orange flame emanating from between its teeth. Kara smells sulfur. Luther and Houndoom aren’t the only ones who have had enough. The others from the basement stumble out, attacking and overpowering the human as they pile on him. Kara pulls Alice to her chest to hide her eyes, stroking her hair. She doesn’t know if Zlatko is alive or dead when the chimera disperse, but she doesn’t care.

Luther turns back around. He’s tall and imposing as ever, but Kara can see the kindness in his eyes that wasn’t there before.  
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Zlatko had control over me, reset me. I… I was a deviant before I found him. He said he was going to help me, but he just put me in that machine and kept me for himself. But I saw how much you love Alice, how loyal your Pokémon is to you, and I remembered.”  
Kara tilts her head, and Alice turns hers to peek at him through Kara’s hands.  
“I- I know of a safe place we could go.” He offers. “A place I heard others talking about before… It’s another human, someone who could get you across the border like you wanted. I could take you there, protect you.”  
Mesprit hums, their tails twisting in contemplation before their voice fills Kara’s head.  
_“He is truly penitent, and his words are genuine. However, I will protect you still when he can not.”_

Kara nods her head slowly and her eyes land on Luther.  
“…okay.” She says, and Luther smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> the timeline where Todd dies is the only valid timeline


End file.
